Did The White House Hold Petraeus Affair Over Him For Favorable Benghazi Testimony?

Did any of you find it odd that the now former CIA Director David Petraeus testified that the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi appeared to have been sparked by an angry mob, even when the facts coming out suggested otherwise? Now that the truth about his affair has come out maybe we know why. Charles Krauthammer speculated that the White House held the affair over his head so he would testify as they saw fit, only to drop the hammer on him after the election.

I think the really shocking news today was that General Petraeus thought and hoped he could keep his job. He thought that it might and it would be kept secret, and that he could stay in his position. I think what that tells us is really important. It meant that he understood that the FBI obviously knew what was going on. He was hoping that those administration officials would not disclose what had happened, and therefore hoping that he would keep his job. And that meant that he understood that his job, his reputation, his legacy, his whole celebrated life was in the hands of the administration, and he expected they would protect him by keeping it quiet.

And that brings us to the ultimate issue, and that is his testimony on September 13. That’s the thing that connects the two scandals, and that’s the only thing that makes the sex scandal relevant. Otherwise it would be an exercise in sensationalism and voyeurism and nothing else. The reason it’s important is here’s a man who knows the administration holds his fate in its hands, and he gives testimony completely at variance with what the Secretary of Defense had said the day before, at variance with what he’d heard from his station chief in Tripoli, and with everything that we had heard. Was he influenced by the fact that he knew his fate was held by people within the administration at that time?

Why, of course they did. If people would just think WWMD? (what would mobsters do?), then it’s even easy to anticipate their moves. Witness intimidation, jury tampering, hush money from slush money, subornation of testimony, gun running, prostitution, you get the picture. A futuristic documentary series was made years ago about this administration, it was called The Godfather.

Coincidentally, I am reading a work of fiction set in Stalin’s Russia and a character just said (of corrupt leaders) “When you want to deflect attention from failure–your failure–stage a trial”. Obama won, all of the bad news comes out, and Patraeus is instantly on trial, distracting everyone from the big failures. Yawn.